Dev Chat Summary: November 2 (4.7 week 11)

This post summarizes the dev chat meeting from November 2nd (agenda, Slack archive).

Reminders

• Dev Chat timing: The Chat remains at 20:00 UTC.  Daylight Savings Time means that 20:00 UTC may be a different time for you already, or it may be a different time soon.
• Schedule: Today is the target for BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 2! That leaves us one week until the final scheduled beta, where the list of tickets should be at zero. It is currently at 74.
• Tickets: For any tickets you’ve moved into the milestone, please make sure these are active tickets, with some kind of activity in the last 7 days.
• Bug Scrubs: Can you run a scrub to help ensure tickets move forward? If you have interest in helping run a scrub and ensure tickets land in 4.7, then please reach out to @jbpaul17 or @jorbin and we’ll find a time that works best for you.

Beta 1 Testing Updates

• Forums-wise, an unresolved Twenty Seventeen issue that may be user error, the rest were either confirmed user error or filed in TracTrac An open source project by Edgewall Software that serves as a bug tracker and project management tool for WordPress.
• A couple customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. defects reported, one regarding infinite refresh and another one that relates to content security policy and Firefox which needs more reporter feedback since it is not reproducible by me. Also the edit shortcuts still have unresolved issues and maybe even need some UIUI User interface changes to improve discoverability.

Remaining 4.7 Schedule

• Beta 2 later today. Beta 3 in a week.
• RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). comes 6 days after that – the reason for RC being on a Tuesday instead of Wednesday is because of php[world] for @Helen (will be keynoting).
• The goal is for RC to be much closer to a traditional RC (i.e. something finished and polished).  This means the final Beta should be where we are at zero open tickets besides possibly the About page.
• An RC really should represent the state in which we believe the software could be shipped
• The week after that is US Thanksgiving – we have the option of another RC if needed, but there may be lower activity volume as people travel and have obligations, etc.
• Note that to ship an RC we have to be at zero tickets, though, which is less than 2 weeks away.
• Would very much like to be able to have a video ready before WCUS (@Helen has vague outline, looking for help outside of the usual WP suspects)
• Then the week after that is WCUS – again, have the option of another RC if needed, and we should hit string freeze at that time at the latest, as many people will be traveling for WCUS.
• Then, release on December 6.

Dev Posts / Field GuideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. for 4.7

• List of Dev Notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. should all be completed and published this week:
  • Customizer Summary – @westonruter and @celloexpressions
  • Twenty Seventeen – @davidkennedy
  • Images – @mike @joemcgill
  • removal of the automatic fallbacks for generating alt – @joemcgill
  • LocaleLocale A locale is a combination of language and regional dialect. Usually locales correspond to countries, as is the case with Portuguese (Portugal) and Portuguese (Brazil). Other examples of locales include Canadian English and U.S. English. switching – @swissspiddy
  • user language – @swissspiddy
  • editor – @azaozz
  • multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site – @jeremyfelt
  • PDF Thumbs/Preview – @mike
  • WP_List_Util – @swissspidy
  • resource hints – @swissspidy
  • WP_Taxonomy – @swissspidy
  • Post Type Labels – @swissspidy
  • starter content – @helen

Bug Scrubs

• Would like to see near daily scrubs for now until RC of report 6 and of the “Defects Awaiting Review, reported against trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision.” section of report 40
• It looks like 11AM and 2PM Eastern should work each day
• Would love to see a European and/or Australian also do some during non-USA centric times
• We should have some scheduled stuff for people to show up if they need to schedule their time, but if you’re around and going through the report, throw up a here or another bat signal and just do one ad hoc.

Beta 2

• What needs to be done to get this out the door?
• Likely to go out on Thursday instead of today
• We are at 71 open tickets. Would love to see us get down to at least 40.
• generally there are still enhancements (polish) going in for new features.
• Since a lot about the REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. is about developer experiences, polishing the developer experience seems like a perfectly good thing to be doing during beta.
• Whether it’s a bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. or an enhancementenhancement Enhancements are simple improvements to WordPress, such as the addition of a hook, a new feature, or an improvement to an existing feature. in your eyes is not the important criterion – it’s about whether it’s a part of what you believe a polished set of REST API endpoints should be when you ship them.
• Tickets to folks would ideally like to resolve for Beta 2:
  • #37032: Guard against infinite reload when setting change causes premature selective refresh
  • #38543: Twenty Seventeen: Firefox 49 renders site name & description off screen.
  • #38532: Customizer: Edit shortcuts buttons: clicking does not work in Firefox
  • #29158: Customizer UI Design lacks contrast for visual hierarchy and does not match wp-adminadmin (and super admin)
  • #38420: APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. Post status parameter does not accept multiple values
  • #38609: REST API should honor the `unfiltered_html` capability
  • GitHub Issue #2848: Avoid use of wp_filter_post_kses to prevent lossy slash handling
• Additional items needed for Beta 2 are a news post for .org and a haiku

#4-7, #core, #dev-chat, #summary